2013 - Issue 4 - Fall

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y
ou know where I'm headed? It's so perfect: the Harvard Club. That's about as
Boston as you can get, isn't it?"
Donna Karan appreciates the kismet of
discussing her latest Boston project while she's
in transit to that bastion of Ivy League fellowship, Midtown Manhattan's Harvard Club.
There she is to give a talk that early-summer
afternoon about her Urban Zen Foundation
philanthropic efforts for the Friends of Fashion,
an organization that's almost as exclusive as the
venue and dedicated to mixing with designers
for the purpose of doing good works. For Karan,
such an event falls squarely within her everlasting objective—to weave together fashion,
philanthropy, art, and the diversity of cultures
into a singular purpose: to make women feel
empowered, not merely about their own style
but with a heightened awareness of how each
woman might impact the world.
You can hear those thoughts turning in
Karan's wonderfully stream-of-consciousness
approach to the conversation about her newest
retail venture, the opening of a shop-in-shop
boutique within Saks Fifth Avenue at The
Shops at Prudential Center, set to debut this
month. On that early May afternoon Karan
had not yet decided how the opening would be
celebrated, but the one thing she did know was
that she wanted her Saks debut to be more than
Champagne and passed hors d'oeuvres—she
wanted it to mean something.
"Having a space and place in Boston makes so
much sense, because it pulls all my passions
together," Karan says. "It's a city that reaches so
many places in mind, body, and spirit—the level
of education, the incredible things being done in
health care, which is so important to my heart. If
I could do anything in Boston, my dream would
be to bring together a seminar of like-minded
people to talk about integrated health care and
what we can do to fix the fact that there is so little
care in health care these days."
When Karan sets her mind on something, it
happens. You need only to examine her track
record: This is the woman who founded a label
at the age of 36 and built it into a multilayered
global empire that today includes her Donna
Karan New York signature collection, her
lower-priced and wildly popular DKNY line,
and Urban Zen, the collection of "seasonless
clothes" that are not only inspired by her love of
yoga, but which also raises awareness and funds
to support integrated therapy and health care
programs around the world.
The signature collection will be showcased in
the Saks shop-in-shop, which will open with
Karan's fall line, a luxe mix defined by her passions. An ode to her innovative 1985 collection,
in which Karan introduced the "seven easy
pieces" she believed essential to every woman's
wardrobe, this fall's collection updates that idea,
combining exquisitely tailored pieces—a great
camel coat, perfectly pleated trousers—with
Karan's sensuous side, seen in the jersey wrap
dress that celebrates a woman's curves, or the
fantastic capes and cashmere wraps that envelop
the wearer in a duality of comfort and luxury.
"The camel coat was the signature of the first
collection I ever did," Karan says. "Along with
pieces like the bodysuit and the great black dress,
I wanted to take the pieces that we chose as the
essence and, 30 years later, offer them up with a
fresh twist so they'd feel modern and relevant for
today." That vision resonates with consumers and
retailers alike. "Donna has an exceptional understanding of how to design timeless clothes for the
modern woman," says Saks Fifth Avenue's Boston
general manager, Gretchen Pace. "Her take on
what pieces are significant in a woman's wardrobe are as relevant today as they were 30 years
ago. She continues to be an important voice in
fashion with collections that define the lifestyle of
the Boston woman."
Also key to the collection is that, almost three
decades later, Karan remains content with her origin story, the notion of designing pieces she
wanted to wear herself. Such a thought allows you
to appreciate her balancing act all the more: her
ability to produce pieces that appear on the runway and look divine on the 21-year-old Karlie
Kloss, but seem equally suitable for the 64-yearold Karan, and every woman in between. Such a
symmetry doesn't happen often in fashion, as any
woman in her 40s or older might attest, yet Karan
embraces it with ease and enthusiasm. She spends
a lot of time thinking about the details, she says,
such as beautiful draping, the ideal length of a
skirt for any woman—every woman—and if a little
sexy bareness is desired, why not the shoulder? "I
do love the shoulder; my statement is that a
woman never gains weight there," she says. "This
collection reflects where my head is at, where I
want the industry to be, and the idea that what we
really need is to feel prepared for anything and to
make our lives a little easier."
There was another aspect of the fall collection
that Karan herself didn't realize until she was
deep into it: "At a certain point I sort of said, 'Oh
my god, I don't think I ever realized how attuned
I was to Stephan's artwork, how integrated his
work was with my work as a designer," she says.
Karan often peppers her conversation with mentions of her late husband, Stephan Weiss, who
divided his own passions among family, a prolific
career as a sculptor, and working as CEO of his
wife's business before he passed away from lung
cancer in 2001. Weiss's sculptures have informed
Karan's work over the years—he designed the
bottles for her fragrances (with the exception of
the bottle of her 2012 release, Donna Karan
Woman, which was designed by Zaha Hadid—
but her husband's contribution was undeniably
great, as she explores in her 2012 book about him,
Connecting the Dots [Assouline, $95]).
"Without either of us, there wouldn't be a
Donna Karan," she says. "The way he connected
"Having a space and place in Boston
makes so much sense, because it pulls all
my passions together."
—Donna Karan
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